Is Jesus Enough?

There is no place like the Wilderness to come to the end of my SELF. The deeper into the Wilderness I go the more every capacity to perform in my own strength, my own understanding, even my own will dries up until I end up stalled out in the Valley of Decision. Finally at a standstill, I cry out to God, “Lord, do you not see my wounds? I am forsaken! I am persecuted! I am alone! Why meeee?” Once the dust settles and my voice has gone hoarse from the shouting, the phrase, “Me, me, me, ME!” echoes through my heart and makes me want to vomit. Conviction cuts deep. I profess that I will walk with Jesus through anything. But the reality is the minute the path gets lonely, clarity vanishes, the mountain top experience fades, and the feelings go away all I can think about is ME. In this dry and barren landscape and at the end of myself I stop long enough to hear the Lord whisper, “Am I enough?”

What a question! Is Jesus enough? Do I need fellowship with other people to sustain me or is Jesus enough? Do I need a good church or a good worship service to feed me or is Jesus enough? Do I need to be understood and accepted by others or is Jesus enough? Do I need a spiritual experience that makes me “feel” His presence or is Jesus enough? Is Jesus enough or do I need healing, blessing, promotion, affirmation, direction, vision, or even ministry to satisfy me? Is my faith all about what I need and what I want and what I do in the name of God or is being with Jesus enough?

I am done lamenting the fact that I don’t “feel” God’s presence, hear His voice, or have fellowship right now. I am starting to understand that the Lord has removed these things from me in order to expose that which takes preeminence from Him. All those things are good but they are secondary to simply being with my Lord. I don’t need fellowship to know Christ. I don’t need prophetic encounters or spiritual experiences to know Christ. I just need Him. And you know what? He needs me too. He is crying out for His people to BE with Him. To sit at His feet and relate with Him, know His heart, and minister to HIS wants, needs, and desires. He created us to love Him and to be loved by Him. Are we not called the Bride of Christ? Marriage is the most intimate relationship that we know on earth and that is what He is after.

I believe that when Jesus is enough for me and I have made ministering to Him my priority that all these things that have dried up in the Desert will return and I will begin to walk out the Kingdom of God in the overflow of love that being in right relationship to the Head brings to the Body. In the Valley of Decision I stand absolutely broken by the reality of my selfish human nature. The choice is this: To move forward on this path to a new level of dying to my SELF in order to make Jesus Christ preeminent or to turn back and walk out a more comfortable, self-centered faith that is wrapped up in what Jesus can do for me or even what I get out of what I do for Him. To the Cross I run to lay my SELF down in order to rise again in the likeness of Christ.

Divine Silence

I often imagine these days that if only I could scream loud enough the heavens would rip open and that still small voice would find me once again. If only I could scream loud enough maybe Jesus would come and sit and talk with me and share a meal with me by the most comforting little fire. (We used to sit together like that underneath a canopy of brilliant stars anytime I wanted). If only I could scream!

But alas, the heavens have shut over me and I cannot hear a thing. A divine silence rules the spiritual atmosphere I inhabit. No longer do I hear the Lord when I seek counsel and direction. Times when revelation flowed steadily from Heaven have come to an end. Clarity has vanished. The intimate everyday guiding words of the Lord have ceased and a very strategic, nearly suffocating silence has invaded my world.

I am desperate without vision and as a visionary it is most unsettling to walk with the Lord in silence. I am no longer able to see by the light of the Spirit even an inch ahead of me. This has naturally brought forth every insecurity I have ever known. Again and again I have looked inward searching for the flaw or fatal sin that has brought upon me such abrupt silence from Heaven. Yet the only wrongdoing I have found is in me thinking that the Lord would be so petty as to give me the silent treatment when I met with His disapproval. In this I trust that the silence is not punishment but actually a revelation in itself.

It often takes me a while to catch on when the Lord is trying to show me something by changing my circumstances. So I must admit that I struggle daily in this quiet place. Waves of depression hit me throughout the day as I think about how stuck I am. I mean I am not hearing anything! I have no vision for where I am at or where I am going. Sometimes I even wonder if I've really missed the mark. I mean missed it by miles! As much effort as it is, if I push aside all these clouding doubts I know in my Spirit that in this quiet place I have been invited to rest in Him. He has called me for a short time to simply be.

The last season was about being led by the Spirit even through fire and hardship. With a few recent lessons in obedience under my belt I know that I dare not act on anything without the urging of the Spirit. So now that this silence prevails I dare not move. I will not move. However, the temptation to move without divine guidance is extremely enticing. Engulfed in a culture that finds its value in doing, to wrap my head around the idea that God could be pleased with my unproductivity and inaction is extremely difficult. It would make me feel so much better to act in my own strength and move forward according to my own volition. But I can't! By His grace He has made it extremely unsatisfying to even think about moving on without hearing His voice.

Can I be still when there is only silence? Can I discipline my flesh enough so that I am able to do nothing until I truly hear His voice? To be completely transparent, this is a harder lesson for me than enduring the persecution and fire of the last season. He is teaching me to understand the value of His rest. In doing so, He must kill the part of me that obtains value in hearing His voice and doing His work. He is showing me that my worth is in Him alone. It is enough to just be with Him, to sit in silence beside Him and simply love Him.

Hidden

Hidden is the best way to describe my life right now. It is like God has led my family and I to the outskirts of the desert and put us in a cave and commanded us to wait and be still. “But God!” I scream, “I have so much to offer, so much to do, so much to say. Why must I wait here alone in the dark?” Silence. Nothing. No reason is clear. So here we are in a place of obscurity. To our friends and family we look like failures. We don’t go to a church, we don’t have a lot of friends, we work menial jobs with educations going to waste, we don’t have money, and we’ve drawn out of established ministry. Yes, we do have gifts and talents, intelligence, and the motivation to have all of those things. However, every time we step out in our own strength to pursue what others would expect us to, everything in us dies. So instead, we obey and wait alone in the dark.

As I sit here living a very quiet existence, I can’t help but feel frustrated as I watch others starting businesses and ministries, buying homes, and using the gifts and talents God gave them. It feels like I am a bunch of grapes God left on the vine when every other bunch was picked, made into wine, and poured out for His glory. So have I fallen away? Am I off in my walk with God? Did I do something wrong? In my flesh these misgivings are very real. Yet, in my spirit I know that God is in this hidden place with us teaching us about Him.

His lessons are humbling. He has put me in a place of insignificance yet specifically filled me up with the vision that I am so much more than what I see. He is rending my flesh; violently separating who I am from who I am not. I am bleeding brokenness. I am shattered by blows to the core of it all. What motivates me? Binds me? Skews me? Kills me? God’s hand is grabbing a hold of it and firmly resisting against what resists. If pressure molds the clay, I am a completely new pot. I am transformed by the heat and pressure of trials and dreams deferred. In the hidden place a big God with a big heart has slowed me down enough to love me to life on His terms.

In the eyes of the world we're not a huge success. We have even failed our Christian culture at times. But we chose to give our lives to the Lord and not to the world and to follow where His Spirit leads. So if He leads us into obscurity in the eyes of others will we follow? If He leads us through the darkness without choosing to tell us why or where we are going will we follow? If he leads us down a path of loss and lack will we follow? If he leads us to the hidden place where we go unseen and unrecognized but known by Him will we follow? If this is the test, then yes we will follow because we trust that through this process He will bring forth our purpose in His perfect time. It is in the hidden place where I find that I have become hidden in Him and that makes enduring this quiet solitude worth every moment.

A Blossom in the Desert

If only I could convey the emotion I feel as I start this blog. It has been so long since I've written anything like this. Writing to me isn't necessarily something I do for my own entertainment. It's not for money. It's not for anyone else's sake. When I write it is to connect with my Creator and to intimately process with Him the transformation He began in me when I invited Him into my life. At times my writing is singing Him love songs or pouring out to Him my darkest pain. It's real and raw and violent. It's how I release the gift of God in me.

With that said, it has been three long years since I've written anything besides a few desperate lines here or there recorded in a nearly empty journal. Before this drought started I would regularly pour out thoughts, prophecies and love songs like a torrential rain. But seasons change as we all know and my husband and I have been in a dry place for a while now. It's not that inspiration is lacking. It's just that the inner workings of the Holy Spirit are so deep that the words are hard to draw out.

The desert place with the Lord isn't a popular sermon topic. It is a season of trials and testing, when His voice and presence are nothing but a fond memory, and what used to make our spirits come alive doesn't anymore. It's a time when loss and lack are abundant and we are forced to evaluate what moves us, rules us, and commands our attention. It is a raw and vulnerable place. But if our hearts are open and we are brave enough to endure, it is also a time like no other when the Holy Spirit strips us down to our foundation and builds us back up into Him.

So here I begin writing once again. Seasons are shifting. The desert has started to bloom here and there. It's still sparse but I feel in my spirit its time to release what has been simmering inside me during this tough but rewarding season of deep maturation in the Lord. It's time for me to start processing all that the Lord has shown me and taught me in the desert and it's time for me to start moving forward into the next season: the hidden place.